


Jeeves and the Pandemic Rannygazoo – or – Bertram and the Pith of the Matter

by godsdaisiechain (preux)



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Comfort, Competent!Bertie, First Kiss, First Time, Illnesses, M/M, POV First Person, care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preux/pseuds/godsdaisiechain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Jeeves and Bertie live through the 1918 Flu Pandemic.</p><p>For the fan_flashworks "purgatory" challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeeves and the Pandemic Rannygazoo – or – Bertram and the Pith of the Matter

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Sort of an alternate-y universe-y thingummy for the TV show…although, if we read the first Jeeves story (1914), they’d been together for quite a while (in Bertiespeak) before he wrote any of those stories and would have been, well, somewhat likely to maybe have happened… perhaps.

**The first wave**  
The Great Flu was a time of horrible rannygazoo in the home place known to many as ‘chez Wooster.’   
  
It all started with one Reginald Jeeves, lately rejected from the service.  He claimed it was because of flat feet, but his order mentioned the necessity of keeping the eccentric Wooster from menacing the populace, so declared by Sir Roderick ruddy Glossop.  Jeeves kept it framed under glass in his lair. 

Blighter.

He thought I was too mentally negligible to read it from the doorway.   
  
As the young master casts a careless e. back across the intervening years, it must be admitted that said y. m. did not appreciate the rannygazoo that was about to descend. At the time, I twiddled away a nervous hour waiting for the paragon of valets.  He had gone to Spain for the shrimping, most ill-advisedly in the humble opinion of Wooster B., and was felled by influenza. The very studs drooped and pined, languishing without the touch of the vanished Jeevesian hand.  
  
Jeeves eventually oozed in limply, as though he was a tea towel that had been wrung out and longed to be draped over a supportive chair back. The y.m. started, dropping a putter, the glad cries dying on the ruby lips.  Had it been a pal teetering unsteadily on the wobbly pins, Bertram would have tucked the willowy corpus up under the shoulder, biffed a slender arm about the p’s corresponding waist and followed the dancing footsteps to deposit said p. in a comfortable chair.  But one did not do such things with Jeeves.    
  
“No, Jeeves!” cried the y. m. as he attempted to tidy the flat, which had been left rather less than pristine by the Whoosit or Whatchamabob who had been thimgummying in his absence.  
  
“Sir?” he said in a pasty tone, swaying in a dismaying manner.  
  
“Hie to your lair and rest.” He opened the mouth to protest.  “Je suis et je reste, Jeeves.”  I absolutely picked up the suitcase and nudged the fellow’s elbow.  
  
“Sir,” he used an unwelcoming tone as we reached the door, but I was not to be gainsaid, if that is the word I want. I entered. His carafe was empty and that useless Thingummy had not left flowers, had, in fact, positively left the money on the kitchen table with a letter saying Jeeves would have had him laughed out of the Junior Ganymedes.  
  
“Have you had supper, Jeeves?”  He twitched in his pre-lying mode. It was the work of few moments to send for a meal and make Jeeves a nice toddy.  He was in his dressing gown, sitting in a wan arm chair when I returned with the small vase from the master bedroom. I covered him with the lap blanket.

He lifted an eyebrow in protest, looking at the flowers in a pained manner.  “None of that soupiness, Jeeves. The very cufflinks and spats have pined for your attention and care, but they must wait until you are in the pink.  It will not do to have you worn to a frazzle lest their clamoring pleas remain forever fruitless.”  
  
Jeeves thanked me gravely. He was almost back to full steam, although much, much slimmer in the waist, within a week.

  
**The second wave**  
  
**Bertie**  
One wonders, when wondering is in the offing, why it is that young Bertram feels so responsible for Bingo Little, that friend of youth, when he gets y. B. into so many scrapes, but there it is. Bingo fell in love with a factory girl, a niceish sort of a bird who genuinely liked him. Naturally, dragging Wooster B to see her had been necessary, and her chums, hoping to bag a rich beau, were all over y. B. like flies to syrup poured over a, er, sticky whatsit.  They all fell ill with the flu within a couple of days. So did Wooster.  
  
Limpness descended and then a sort of irritability and dizziness.  The corpus suddenly gave out and the whole bash took on the very worst sort of scaliness. Jeeves and Wooster were quarantined.  Bingo never caught a thing. At least he sent a box of candy.   
  
In all the years of our association, I had seen very little emotion on the Jeeveisan dial, but it was a study in anxiety now.  My lemon grew so heavy that not even a b and s could tempt me to lift it. The thing was touch and go, and I owe my very life to his unrelenting care. For three days, young Wooster did not leave the bed.  A stone in weight evaporated from the willowy corpus. Poor Jeeves was worn to a shadow. Even in my addled state, I could see it, but dreams would come, sending me skittering and screaming from the bed. The panicked y. m. turned docile as soon as Jeeves took the slender hand. He stayed with me round the clock until the mind returned to its normal equilibrium, if that is the word I want.  
  
**Jeeves**  
My fondness for Mr. Wooster had grown into a warmer emotion on the day he sent for a member of the Junior Ganymede club to see me home when I fell ill in Spain. I did not realize, at first, how my feelings had changed because I was struggling to regain my health and vigor.  
  
Then my young master had fallen ill. The doctor connected his illness with the outbreak that killed a number of factory girls.  Although we were quarantined, several nurses applied for the post, as times were hard.  Mr. Wooster’s mind was affected by his fever and he recoiled in horror from their stern countenances.  My heart swelled when it became apparent that he only wanted me by his side, that my touch could calm and soothe him as no one else could.  I could not let him die.     
  
**Bertie**  
Jeeves, being a brainy cove, phoned Aunt Dahlia for advice.  She could not come, of course, but she rustled up my old nurse, Mrs. Wilson, formerly a constant friend and comfort to the boy Bertram, especially after the parents had shuffled off the coils. I’d been sent to her while they figured out what to do with me, a very great mercy for she followed a policy of ‘let Bertram be Bertram’ and did not attempt to cajole or chivvy or coax. She had since retired, and I visited annually. She engaged to see me better and save Jeeves from nervous prostration.  
  
The young man Bertram would have leapt up with a hearty pip pip and any number of cheery hullo-ullos had the willowy form been even slightly stronger than a limp noodle.  Even flaccid and drooping, however, the y. m. B. felt gladsome when her soft hand smoothed down the golden hair and wiped the fevered brow.  The heart warmed toward my valet also, because he kept his nighttime vigil by my side while Mrs. Wilson slept in the guest room.  
  
I was drowsing one day, well bundled up on the cot in front of a warm fire, and Mrs. Wilson was quietly helping Jeeves air the sick room. I was too weak to even open the e.s., or I would have tried to steal a cow creamer rather than let her go on the way she did, but the y. m. was helpless but to overhear.  
  
“You should have seen him, Mr. Jeeves,” she said, tenderly tucking in a hot water bottle beside the wasted corpus, “such a sweet, cheerful little fellow.  His mother absolutely doted on him.  She was a forbidding type, like Miss Aggie. Kept trying to draw his finer points out.  I know he always felt a bit of a disappointment...”  
  
“He is very kind and generous,” said Jeeves, “and apt to underestimate his abilities.”  
  
Mrs. Wilson patted him approvingly. “And Master Bertie’s father simply adored the boy.  It did the heart good to see them, so confiding and affectionate with each other when they thought no one was looking.”  She laughed softly to herself.  “Of course, his father was a bit of a scamp and encouraged the boy in all sorts of mischief.  Stealing biscuits and climbing in at upstairs windows and scaling rooftops like a monkey.” Jeeves interrupted here to assure her that, when in good health I was ‘not lacking in simian qualities,’ which was slightly insulting if it meant what I thought it meant.  “I found them in a chair, curled up asleep in their pajamas that last day. Poor lad.  He never cried afterward.  Just roamed about the house, carrying his father’s dressing gown.  Brown flannel. I saw it in his drawer just now.” Jeeves had attempted to throw out the very dressing gown early in our career and nearly been sacked for it. “Mr. Wooster was never a dressy man.  No one knows where Master Bertie got it from.”  
  
Suddenly, I remembered something no one ever spoke about.  My parents had been killed by the flu, and I’d been sent to Mrs. Wilson because they thought I could die of it, too.  
  
**Jeeves**  
On the day Mrs. Wilson arrived at the flat, Mr. Wooster was out of immediate danger.  His fever had broken during the night.  
  
“Can I mop up the corpus a bit before she comes, Jeeves? I…” Mr. Wooster’s blue eyes took on a pleading quality, and I agreed.  I built a fire in the bedroom grate, then filled the tub with warm water and helped him clean his wasted form. “It’s bally dreadful being so helpless, Jeeves,” he fretted as the soap slipped from his trembling fingers.  I assured him it was no trouble after his help to me. “Enough of that, Jeeves,” he said.  I propped him up and let him relax in the soothing water, while I changed his bed linens.  When I tucked him back into the clean bed in his fresh pajamas, his gentle smile nearly undid me.  
  
And then Mrs. Wilson came.  I caught a glimpse of Mr. Wooster’s soft, vulnerable expression when she smoothed his hair and I realized that, even during his illness, I had never before seen him in a truly unguarded moment.  
  
Mr. Wooster slept a great deal during his convalescence, and Mrs. Wilson proved to be a very pleasant companion.  She came to the kitchen around teatime on her first afternoon. “Mr. Jeeves?”  She handed me our milk and eggs and a bag of groceries.  “That nice police officer was so good as to mind these.”  
  
I could have fallen through the floor in mortification. “Thank-you. How may I assist you, Madam?” I inquired politely.  
  
“Don’t ‘madam’ ** _me,_**  Mr. Jeeves,” she laughed, looking about in surprise.  “How have you had anyone in to clean with Master Bertie quarantined?”  My shock silenced her—the flat was in a terrible state of disorder.  
  
“The flat is in a terrible state of disorder, Mrs. Wilson.”  
  
Mrs. Wilson examined the kitchen wordlessly. The clean dishes were on the rack.  A tray holding three dirty glasses and a bowl and spoon sat on the side table beside a crumpled tea towel.  The clean laundry back from the last week sat in a basket, covered by a sheet of brown paper against the dust. In the back pantry, the large sink was full of linens I had removed from Mr. Wooster’s bed, soaking in disinfectant before I sent them to be laundered. The towels I’d used for his bath were waiting for the same treatment. The front rooms had not been aired or dusted in over a week. “You would be shocked at the state most places are in after a sickness like this, then. No wonder he has always liked you so much.  I’d never seen him take to a manservant this way.”  She put the clean dishes away over my protest and peered into the back pantry. “Please give an old woman some tea, Mr. Jeeves.  After this, I’ll expect the run of the kitchen, you must understand.”  
  
“Perhaps I should carry it to the sitting room, where you can be within easy reach of Mr. Wooster should he have need of you?”  
  
“He’s taken something to make him sleep. I’d like you to join me.”  I hastened to fill a tray with the tea things and plates of bread and butter and sandwiches.  I was still tired from my own convalescence.  Had I been undisturbed, I would have prepared a much heartier repast.   Mrs. Wilson eyed my work narrowly.  “You should take some of that potted meat as well, Mr. Jeeves.”  
  
 We sat together and Mrs. Wilson poured.  “I understand from Mrs. Travers and the doctor that you tended to him?”  
  
“Mr. Wooster found the nurses from the agency to be rather alarming.”  
  
Mrs. Wilson clucked softly to herself.  “He always preferred his father when he was a little boy.”  She put another sandwich on my plate. “Now tell me about his illness. The doctor said he’d never seen such a well-tended sickroom. The bath was always clean, scented candles, fresh flowers, and I see you’ve set up the gramaphone to play softly while he rests.”  
  
“Mr. Wooster likes music,” I said.  She looked at me pointedly. “He prefers things to be clean and neat, especially when he is unwell.”  
  
“Mr. Jeeves, his bedroom and bath are practically spotless, and Master Bertie clearly had a very thorough wash today.  Even his hair is clean.  You must have helped him. He stopped allowing me to tend to him that way when he was seven.”  
  
“He prefers to be clean,” I said, feeling increasingly desperate.  At the thought of his dear head resting so confidingly on my shoulder while I dried his hair, I began to tremble. I set down the tea cup before it began to rattle in the saucer.  Mrs. Wilson came and set a hand on my arm.  
  
“It’s obvious that you’re fond of him. You saved his life, you know.  The doctor said so.”  
  
“I was so certain that he could not survive this, and I could not bear the thought of him dying among disorder and discomfort,” I admitted. “Especially after…” My throat closed.  
  
“After?”  She looked at me appraisingly.  
  
Mr. Wooster would be annoyed, but there was nothing for it. “Recently, I fell ill in Spain and he sent for someone to see me safely back.  And when I told him that you were arriving, he insisted on bathing.  He wished to dress and sit up for you, but I prevented him.”  
  
Mrs. Wilson fell back in happy surprise. “He asked you to help get ready for me? What a sweet, dear boy.”  She eyed me again.  “Mr. Jeeves, this is an unusual situation, but I believe I can trust you. Eat those sandwiches.  He’s going to be achy and uncomfortable and I’ll need to show you how to massage his muscles.  Even if I were strong enough, I think he’d prefer to have you.”  
  
My heart swelled again.  
  
**Third wave**  
Soon, I’d recovered enough to totter down to the club for a cheerful snifter, if it hadn’t been quarantined.  Mrs. Wilson was vacating to see to Roderick Spode, but we were none of us happy about it. She had been his nanny before she was mine. Perhaps some day I’ll write out all the embarrassing stories she told me about him. The epidemic was in full spate, and there was not a doctor or nurse to be found for love or money. Otherwise, Mrs. Wilson would not have had to go.  
  
Worse, some blighter of a tradesman had wandered in the back way, sneezed on Jeeves and then collapsed and died. She was that worried because our quarantine was extended. I would not get sick again, they thought, but Jeeves might, and there would be no one to help us.  
  
“I’ve made sure your larder is all stocked up, lamb,” she said anxiously.  I’d been the only one of my set fallen ill at the time, and the largesse had poured forth unstintingly. We had all manner of strange patent medicines and fruits and dried meats and fish and potted meat and canned things, cherries dried and in bottles, cheeses and pickled eggs and biscuits and jams and whatever else they could lay their hands on. “That nice Mr. Jarvis is seeing to your bread and milk and eggs and groceries—he’ll leave them in your mail basket. Mr. Jeeves may need a rest after his shock, so don’t fuss him about your socks. Now, all the sick room things are in the guest room closet and the extra sheets and blankets are all clean and bundled up in the hall closet. And be sure you both take your Oxo.” She fretted until she was out the door.  
  
It was lucky Mrs. Wilson saw to all that because Jeeves had become ill and not mentioned it, not that it would have helped anything. I oozed to his lair a day or so after Mrs. Wilson left and found the door ajar and a very grey-looking Jeeves lying in the bed. Blast.  
  
“Sir?” he seemed half out of his onion, which frightened the y.m.  Jeeves could get rough with the best of them, but he calmed visibly on seeing me. “Sir. You are well?” he rasped, taking my hand, which should have seemed odd, but wasn’t after the weeks he’d cared for me.  “You are well?”  
  
“Yes, Jeeves.” He drank his Oxo like a docile cow, the nice kind, not the ones they use as models for creamers.  Never will Bertram understand what powers guided his thoughts in that moment. “I have need of you in the master bedroom,” I declared.  
  
Somehow, we tottered to my room and Jeeves collapsed on the bed, moaning faintly.  He protested as I tucked him in firmly.  “Jeeves, I need you to stay.” He struggled, and I felt how weak I was and how strong he’d gotten again. The onion made a spectacular dive for it. “The cot is sent out to be cleaned. You must stay right here until I give you leave to go.”  
  
This soothed him. “Yes, sir,” he said finally, his eyes fluttering shut. I ankled out and phoned, but no one could help.  Wooster had never tended a sick person before and I felt a bally useless fool, but I was the only one Jeeves had. As it turned out, he was saved by being sick in Spain. They hadn’t invented the fellow who found those virus and antibody things yet, but the Jeevesian corpuscles were just as brainy as the man and had done their business.  He never lost control of himself or threw things or went mad and forced me to read ethical theory.  Mostly he just sweated and took whatever medicine I gave him and ate a few mouthfuls of whatever I fed him and tried not to choke on his Oxo. I racked the old co-co-nut for the best way to coax him to cooperate once or twice, but he was like a lamb for me.  
  
Much of those few days was so ghastly that the bean refuses to remember it, but a few things lingered. I never forgot the look of abject shame on his dial the first time I helped him in the bathroom.  I had felt similarly, I know.  It was such a humiliating thing.  On the third day, I was so knackered that I spilled Oxo on his pajamas and the smell was enough to have the pair of us demented. The middle twisted at the helpless look of him. The room was a horrible shambles.  
  
I got him mopped up and into the trousers from the heliotrope silk with gold stripe and a brown dressing gown from my drawer.  I had managed to pick up the milk from the mail basket, but I was too knackered to make it to the kitchen, so I crawled in beside him and we lived that day on what we had left in the bedroom: biscuits, rum cake and chocolates washed down with brandy and the milk.  I woke up in the afternoon of the following day, my face tucked up against the brown flannel dressing gown. I could feel a man’s arms around me and a cheek resting atop the golden head.  Nothing had ever been so comforting.  
  
For a moment, I thought I was a boy again and my father was holding me.  Then I realized where I was and lifted the lemon.  
The upper lip stayed stiff just long enough to register that Jeeves was breathing peacefully, with no hint of fever or pneumonia or any other bally awful thing. There was plenty of food in the place to feed him up again and I felt like I could stand to fetch it. I rested the bean against him and the tears welled up.  
  
“Sir?” Jeeves murmured as the first sob wracked the corpus. “Are you hurt?” He gave me a very light squeeze—he was still terribly weak—and said, “Oh, darling, please don’t cry.”  
  
The difference between chaps and beazels in situations like this cannot be underestimated.  A b. told not to cry makes an all-powerful whumpus of it and bleats in a most disgusting manner, often for hours.  A chap does his best to stiffen the lip.  Bertram paused immediately because something in the way of a revelation had come to pass.  
  
“I say, Jeeves, did you call the young master ‘darling’?”  
  
Jeeves made a little noise like a weak chuckle. “I apologize for the liberty,” he said.  
  
“You do? Why?”  
  
“I fear our recent closeness has made me insufficiently respectful of the distance between us, sir. I formed an attachment to you without your leave.”  
  
By this time, I had craned up the lemon for a more thorough look at the Jeevesian map and found it to be occupied by a glow and twinkling e.s and a warm smile. Apparently, he was toying with me.  The heart leapt and bounded in the narrow breast, for this teasing meant he was truly well. I fluttered unabashedly. “Perhaps you could, er, ah, request, if that is the word I want, permission, and ah, whatsit.”  
  
The smile broadened, and even though stones in weight had been stripped off our frames and no shaving had taken place for some not inconsiderable period and neither of us smelled particularly daisy fresh, or even as though any right thinking daisy would come within several miles of the bedchamber, I had never seen such a lovely and wonderful thing.  Words can’t capture it, but think about the sunset in the Italian Riviera and the sunrise from Antibes all mixed up with the feeling you get after winning a tennis match for the nation and you’ll have an inkling.  “Then I may understand that the words of endearment you have been using for some weeks were not merely a matter of sick room form?”  
  
To own the truth, they may well have been, but it would not do to mince endearments. “You may, Jeeves.”  
  
In a soppy novel, we would have sealed the lips, but our Oxo-tainted breaths would likely have killed us, and we settled for Wooster leaning the bean against Jeeves’s breast.  Outside the war raged and others fell to the epidemic scourge, but we tottered about, napping between every activity and, very slowly, growing stronger.  We left all ‘darling’ talk aside until we were feeling better.  It was enough to be together.  
  
A week later, we were teetering along, bundling up dirty linen and pajamas and towels when someone came to the door.  It was Mrs. Wilson, holding a basket of provisions covered with a red checked cloth. A sort of whirlwind erupted when she saw the state of us.  In a trice, she had us both tucked into the Chesterfield.  Jeeves tried to ooze into his lair, but she would have none of it.  “I had meant to merely stop on my way, but clearly I will have to….”  
  
“I implore you, madam…” said Jeeves gravely, then she stuffed a thermometer in his mouth and tucked a hot water bottle in next to him and patted his head. I did not think anyone could pat the Jeevesian head while he was alert and functioning, but Mrs. Wilson had powers that defied all knowing.  
  
I hastened to reassure. “We are fine.  No pneumonia or rickets or scrofulous whatnot.  We have plenty of Oxo and vitamins and should not keep you.”  Jeeves explained that I had run the household while he was ill.  
  
Her visage, which had been looking alarmingly like Aunt Agatha’s, softened. “You always were a dear boy, Master Bertram,” she said, squeezing the hand. “I am very, very proud of you.” She set us to rights and toddled off a day later and I oozed back to Jeeves and tucked myself under his arm and bunged an arm around his waist and we flowed to my bed.  
  
“Sir, I have long felt a… fondness for you and this illness has made me realize how empty my life would be without you.”  
  
It took some time for this to percolate through the Wooster grey matter. I rather wanted a cheery snuggle. “Then you would not object to some pashing?” I asked.  Pithy, but not entirely lacking finesse.  
  
A laugh, an actual laugh, escaped him, and he slipped an arm about the willowy waist. “On the contrary.”  He stroked the golden hair and I did the same with his dark locks and we gazed deep into each others’ eyes and then sealed the lips for the very first time. Delish.   
  
**Epilogue**  
  
The first time I made love to Mr. Wooster was a revelation of parts of my own heart I never knew existed.  We would live a long, full life together, but in those early days we had no idea what would happen to us, whether we would be permitted to stay together, or if the ties that bound us would be severed by forces beyond our control.  
  
On that first evening, I came back into myself to find him holding my head against his shoulder and stroking my hair.  My days of forced contemplation, while lying ill had opened my eyes to the deeper nature of my love for him, but our physical connection was entirely surprising. He was tender and athletic and enthusiastic, and I had felt myself swept away by his attentions. “Did you like it?” he murmured in my ear when I stirred.  I could feel his smile as I made an inarticulate grunt of pleasure. “I didn’t think you liked chaps, Jeeves.”  
  
“I had been of the belief you preferred the attentions of women in these matters yourself, sir,” I said.  
  
He chuckled.  “No valet talk, Jeeves.”  
  
“Then call me Reggie, please, darling,” I said, snuggling against him.  
  
“I love you Reggie,” he said. I felt him stroke the hair from my face and kiss my forehead gently. “The dial seems to be puckering a bit.”  
  
“I love you, too,” I whispered.  
  
He squeezed me tight in his arms. “Oh, I should have figured that out when you framed that order calling me a loony,” he said, dimming the light and stroking my naked back.  I had never felt so cherished or beloved.  
  
I snorted and he smiled. “You continually surprise me,” I said.  
  
“Are you all right, Reggie love?”  
  
“As long as I am with you.  Thank-you for rescuing me.”  
  
“None of that, Reg.” We nestled together sleepily and he rubbed my back and hair and arms, as if checking that I genuinely was safe with him. “Mentally negligible my foot,” he murmured, pulling the covers around us as I drifted to sleep against him.


End file.
